The poem Nighttime Fires by Regina Barecca explains the speaker’s complex view of her father. The speaker uses imagery to describe her father’s strange behaviours after losing his job. Figurative language is used strategically to explain the memories of this young girl’s strange adventures. The diction in this poem is also used very well helping us to understand why these nighttime fires left such a lasting impact on this grown woman from when she was only five years old. All of these things are very important to the progress of the poem and the engagement of the reader.

The diction in the poem is very important, as it would be in any poem, but Barecca chooses her words very nicely to create the image that she wants us to perceive. Lines 3 and 4 talk about when the children are woken in the night. “Piled seven of us, all pajamas and running noses” this uses diction to show us that the kids would be in bed asleep when they would be awoken to go and chase the nighttime fires. The word choice here helps us in the sense that the kids didn’t want to be up chasing fires and helping the reader to understand that the kids likely saw these adventures in a negative light. On lines 7 and 8 the author uses the word mad when describing her father “tried crosswords until he split the pencil between his teeth, mad” this makes him seem very angry and irritated because he would bite on the pencil so hard that it would snap. The use of “wolf whine” as a descriptor for the sounds of the fire engines makes you stop and think of what a wolf whine sounds like and what the fire engine would be sounding Card 2

like. In lines 14 and 15 the speaker mentions “the fire engines that snaked like dragons and split the silent streets. It was festival, carnival.” telling us that the streets were silent and calm until fires broke out and the fire engines burst the silence, making loud noises and bright colours from their flashing lights and piercing sirens; this giving off the vibe of a...

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...Figurativelanguage is used in poems, songs, books, short stories, and in everyday language. The use of similes and hyperboles are able to affect the tone, meaning and theme that better explain the meaning in stories and songs. Figurativelanguage is meant to appeal to the senses in order to provide interest and evoke emotion in what is being read or heard. Alicia Keys, “This Girl Is On Fire”, is a great example of figurativelanguage. The figurativelanguage in this song provides a respectful and jovial tone, and it also demonstrates the theme of the capability of potential and societies urge to undermine the success of others.
The first verse of the song sets the tone of respect and the theme of potential. The first lines of the song use multiple metaphors that read “She’s just a girl, and she’s on fire. Hotter than a fantasy, longer like a highway. She’s living in a world, and it’s on fire,” which demonstrate how this girl is just an ordinary girl but she has been able to accomplish great things in this competitive world that we live in. The following verse also demonstrates how the ordinary girl has “stood her ground” in the competitive world. The verse contains an idiom that reads “Oh, she got both feet on the ground...Oh, she got her head in the clouds and she’s not backing down,” which states that...

...Top 20 of Figure of Speech
Alliteration
-When two or more words in a poem begin with the same letter or sound.
"The soul selects her own society."
Anaphora
-A rhetorical term for the repetition of a word or phrase at the beginning of successive clauses.
“This royal throne of kings, this sceptred isle”
Antithesis
-A rhetorical term for the juxtaposition of contrasting ideas in balanced phrases or clauses.
"Everybody doesn't like something, but nobody doesn't like Sara Lee."
Apostrophe
-A figure of speech in which some absent or nonexistent person or thing is addressed as if present and capable of understanding.
"Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art"
Assonance
-Identity or similarity in sound between internal vowels in neighboring words.
Poetry is among the oldest of living things.
Chiasmus
-In rhetoric, a verbal pattern (a type of antithesis) in which the second half of an expression is balanced against the first with the parts reversed. Essentially the same as antimetabole.
"Nice to see you, to see you, nice!"
Euphemism
-The substitution of an inoffensive term (such as "passed away") for one considered offensively explicit ("died"). Contrast with dysphemism.
“You've got a prime figure. You really have, you know.”
Hyperbole
-A figure of speech (a form of irony) in which exaggeration is used for emphasis or effect; an extravagant statement. Adjective: hyperbolic. Contrast with understatement.
It is going to take a bazillion years to get...

...FIGURATIVELANGUAGE
5TH GROUP :
1. FA D H I L A A S H A D I
2. H A N A P U T R I A N I
3. S I T I R A H M A YA N T
4. Z H E L D Y O C TA V I A
WHAT IS IT??
•
Metaphors tend to provoke thought and
feeling to a greater extent than more literal descriptions do.
Examples :
 “My mother’s face curdled” [Metaphor (kiasan)]
Curdled : signalled distaste and trepidation.
Curdled : The writers express and the readers should work
out their meaning; they should be able to imagine.
 “My mother grimaced” [Literal (harfiah/nyata)]
“Like a picture, a metaphor displays rather than describes it’s
content.”­Stern
literal meanings.
 Abstracted from contexts of use, they are suitable for
re-use in many different situations, rather than only in
re-enactments of the original contexts in which we met
them.
 If the only word meanings used in the explicature are
literal meanings, then we have a literal
interpretation.
5.1 LITERAL AND FIGURATIVE USAGE
• The traditional term figures of speech covers various kinds
of figurative – as distinct from literal – uses of language
 Grant and Bauer (2004:51) present a simple diagnostic test:
constructions ‘compositionally involving an untruth which
can be reinterpreted pragmatically to understand the
intended truth …’ are figurative usages.
 As always when interpreting what people say or write, one
chooses among possibilities with the aim of finding a...

...﻿List of FigurativeLanguage and Rhetorical devices
Alliteration, assonance and consonance: Alliteration is the repetition of the first sound in nearby words, for example: Always avoid alliteration. Assonance is the repetition of identical or similar vowel sounds within, for example, words in the lines of a poem. Consonance is the repetition of consonant sounds in the words. All three techniques can be combined:
And the silken sad uncertain rustling of each purple curtain Thrilled me, filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before.
— Edgar Allan Poe: “The Raven”
There is alliteration in the repetition of the s sound at the start of “silken” and “sad”. There is assonance in the repetition of the ur sound in “uncertain”, “purple”, and “curtain”. And there is consonance in the repetition of the s sound in the words “uncertain” and “rustling”.
Anaphora, epistrophe, and symploce: an Anaphora is the repetition of a series of words at the beginnings of neighboring clauses. An epistrophe (or epiphora) is the repetition of words at the ends of neighboring clauses. Both forms of repetition help emphasize the contents.
Examples of anaphora:
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring...

...FigurativeLanguage and Imagery
ENG 340 Creative Writing
Whenever you describe something by comparing it with something else, you are using figurativelanguage. Figurativelanguage is the use of language to describe something by comparing it to something else. It serves many linguistic purposes. It allows people to express abstract thoughts. It creates tone and communicates emotional content. The ability to use figurativelanguage in writing can make a poem or story more enjoyable for the reader. Figurativelanguage is taking words beyond their literal meaning and can come in many different forms, all to create a vivid picture of the written word. There are many ways to incorporate figurativelanguage into writing, some of which come as naturally as speaking. A Simile uses the words “like” or “as” to compare one object or idea with another to suggest they are alike, such as “busy as a bee”. In Hart Crane’s, “My Grandmother’s Love Letters” he uses the simile ““liable to melt as snow” to describe the fragility of the letters that have been hidden away in the rafters. This use of figurativelanguage helps the reader to visualize paper that may not be able to withstand someone touching it, but could also be used to convey the fact that not only...

...Figurative and literal language is different methods used in conveying and analyzing language. Literal language refers to words that do not differ from their original definition. Figurativelanguage refers to words or groups of words that exaggerate the meanings of the words. Figurativelanguage is not used literally but instead involves similarities to concepts or other contexts; which results in a figure of speech. For example, “it’s raining hard outside” is literal and “it’s raining cats and dogs outside” is figurative. Figurativelanguage can add excitement to words; however if it is not delivered correctly it can cause confusion. Below are some examples of the most common types of figurativelanguage as well as their examples.
Idiom is a set expression of two or more words that means something other than the literal meanings of its individual words. The function of idioms is to make language richer and more colorful and to convey subtle shades of meaning or intention. Idioms are used often to replace a literal word or expression, and many times the idiom better describes the full nuance of the meaning. For example the expression, “Sally was pulling my leg” is more expressive than “Sally was teasing me.” Someone could potentially misunderstand this expression and...

...Use of Imagery and FigurativeLanguage in “Facing It” by Yusef Komunyakaa
In his poem, “Facing It”, Yusef Komunyakaa describes his ambivalent emotions towards the Vietnam War of which he was a veteran. Reflecting on his experiences, Yusef expresses his conflicting feelings about the Vietnam War and his feelings about how racism has played a part in America’s history. By using visual imagery and metaphoric language throughout the poem, Yusef is able to reflect the sad and confused emotions he felt while visiting the Vietnam memorial.
Yusef begins the poem by using visual imagery to describe his face reflecting in the memorial wall. He uses the specific words “black face fades” to tell us a few things (line 1). One thing it tells us is that the speaker is African American. But the other, more important, thing it tells us is that he understands that, as his face faces into the dark granite, he wasn’t the only person affected by the war. The poet also has some anger and ambivalence about surviving the war. His emotions are seemingly hard for him to bottle up as we see from more visual imagery “Dammit: Not tears” (line 4). He then uses some metaphors to help describe his struggle to compose himself. The metaphors “I’m stone. I’m flesh”, show how the speaker is split on how he feels (line 5). The speaker says he is stone, almost as if the he is talking to himself...

...FigurativeLanguage versus Literal Language
Maurice Mayo
Sonja Sheffield
Critical Thinking
1/25/13
It is important for one who speaks figuratively to take in consideration the audience might not be able to fully follow or understand them completely. Although figurativelanguage can be entertaining, it can be interpreted in a way other that what was intended. Therefore, it will need some explanation.
The word “idiom” is an expression whose meaning is not literally what’s said, but it is what is to be understood based on its premise. The idiom functions as a substitute for could be considered a less interesting way of expression. “Play your heart out” is an idiom that literally be translated as someone’s heart is leaving their body while they are playing; but by my basketball coach used this idiom when he wanted us play to the best of our ability.
An analogy is a similarity between of two things that have common features, on which a comparison may be made (Harper, 2010). I use analogies when I am trying to explain an idea so that my audience will have a point of reference, and hopefully get a better understanding of what I am trying to explain. “Her tears ran like the waters of rushing river”, is an analogy that compares tears to waters of rushing river.
A metaphor is an implied comparison between two things (Kirby/Goodpaster, 2007). “Michael Jordan is a beast”, is a metaphor that describe...